All I want for Christmas is a decent aggregator.

I'm a bit miffed. I apologize. Really. I want a new aggregator, I'm really a bit busy to write one, and I keep thinking that somewhere we (as a community) could write something that ended up not being a ton of crap.

I've used a number of them, some of them quite briefly: Newzcrawler, BlogBridge (the one I'm on now), Google Reader, BlogLines, more. There're problems with each of them.

BlogBridge, for example, is tolerable... but now they want to charge for the number of feeds I read. After having used the thing for months and months now, I feel ambushed by the option to buy services, when I wasn't informed that I might have to do so up front.

So... being a software wonk and all, I think we - as a community - should write our own aggregator, one that does what we need. I'd like to outline some of the requirements I want, so we can have a starting point to work from. Anyone who'd like to add to this is welcome to do so.

1. I want a server application, one that has a web client, but can spit out XML so WAP and desktop clients can be used. Wouldn't mind a portlet client as well.
   
2. I'm more current on Java than anything else, plus I work for a major Java-oriented web site, plus I use multiple OSes on my desk, so I'm a little partial to Java. I'm not so proud that I'm going to fight for this a lot, although given my OS proclivities (Solaris, Linux, Windows) anything running in the JVM would be better than something targeted for specific OS/CPU combinations.
3. It should be able to manage individual user accounts. One master feed list, each user can add feeds to that list, each user can select feeds they're interested in from that list.
4. For every blog entry, each user should be able to say "this is interesting to me" or "this is horribly dull." That way, the system can learn what's interesting to each user. Filters should be available for the entry display that shows only things the system thinks are really interesting to you (based on your feed subscriptions), all entries, all entries that it thinks are interesting to you (based on your preferences, not your feed subscriptions).
5. Should be open source. ASL, BSD, MPL are fine licenses for my tastes.

So there you have a basic set of requirements. Shouldn't be too bad. If people are interested, hey - say so. We can set up a project on java.net or somewhere and get this puppy started. I know I need it.

tags: blog  aggregator  java